


The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze

by Annariel



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Circus, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 08:26:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3112925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annariel/pseuds/Annariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint and Natasha find themselves inside a circus museum.  Two mysterious strangers claim they are trapped in a time bubble and to free themselves they must re-enact a disastrous trapeze accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaffyr (kaffyrutsky)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaffyrutsky/gifts).



> Thanks to fredbassett for beta-reading.

"This is deliberately targeted at you," Natasha said when they entered the Museum of the Circus.

Clint was inclined to agree. It _could_ just be a coincidence but he had been in this game a long time and it seemed unlikely that their contact should have arranged to meet them at this address and just failed to mention it was a circus museum.

By unspoken agreement he and Natasha split up and began separately exploring the two long corridors that ran between the exhibits. The museum had been closed for three years, at least according to the signage on the door. There was a layer of dust over everything which didn't help the eerie atmosphere created by the low lighting. Clint moved silently past faded posters of laughing clowns, a glass case full of top hats and a stuffed lion.

Out of the corner of his eye he kept catching a faint glimpse of bright blue, but each time he looked it was gone. He shook his head and debated breaking comms silence to alert Coulson. Once he would have treated it as nothing, but that was before Loki, and the blue that had swamped his vision.

They both stepped out into the fake circus ring together. Up above them hung two empty trapezes, one swung back and forth making a slight creaking sound. Natasha raised her guns and sighted around the darkness of the roof. If the trapeze was moving then the air up there was moving. Clint drew his bow but he couldn't make out a target.

"Anton Castelfranchi and Gabriella Guinchiglia, the greatest trapeze act of all time," said a British voice.

A man emerged out of the shadows at the far side of the ring. He was wearing a pale grey suit and holding a faded flyer in one hand which he seemed to be reading. He looked up at the two S.H.I.E.L.D agents with a querying expression as if expecting them to have an answer to something. He did not match the description of their contact.

Natasha flicked on comms. "We have company," she said quietly.

There was silence over the comms.

"Their real names were Clark Smith and Morag Gluckton. They used something more glamorous for the ring," said a second British voice, a woman's this time.

Clint realised a blonde woman was sitting in the front row of seats and he felt a moment of surprise, wondering why he hadn't seen her before. The way Natasha's guns swung to cover the woman told him that Natasha had also been unaware of the second person. The hairs rose on the back of Clint's neck. The woman was wearing a bright blue satin dress. The exact blue of Loki's sceptre.

"Who are you?" Natasha asked.

She had one gun covering the man, and one covering the woman. Clint followed his instinct and decided the woman was the more dangerous of the two. He drew back the string of his bow and let the arrow point towards her heart.

"Does it matter?" the woman asked with a smile.

"Yes," Natasha said.

"Very well, I am Sapphire and this is Steel."

Clint assumed they were code names. "What are you doing here?" 

"It might be more pertinent to ask what you are doing here," Steel said. He sounded irritated.

"It isn't to us," Natasha replied, her guns never wavering.

Sapphire stood up and moved to stand next to Steel. 

Clint and Natasha tracked her with their weapons. She took the flyer from Steel's hands and looked down at it. "You really shouldn't have been able to get in here. It's sealed off."

Clint caught the flicker of Natasha's eyes in his direction. The museum hadn't seemed particularly sealed off.

"We picked the lock," he said.

"The circus ring, not the museum. This ring is sealed inside a time bubble," Sapphire said with a condescending smile.

Natasha's head jerked slightly, a clear instruction that Clint should check the perimeter while she kept the two strangers covered. Clint looked back the way they had come. Beyond the tiered seats, the museum was shrouded in darkness. He holstered his bow and walked towards it, down the passage between the seats. Moments later he walked back into the ring. He frowned and turned, walking out of the Ring again, only to find himself back facing the two strangers.

"Explanations!" Natasha demanded.

"You are sealed inside a time bubble. When you try to leave you simply bounce off the sides." Steel said walking towards them.

"Didn't feel much like bouncing, felt like... nothing," Clint said.

Steel shrugged still advancing on them. "That's what happened. The more important question is how you got inside the bubble in the first place."

Steel was within a yard of Natasha when she holstered her guns with a scowl. His apparent lack of concern for the threat they posed left her with little choice - either she fired or she didn't. For the time being she had decided not to fire. 

Clint nodded to where Sapphire was holding the flyer. "I knew them," he said. "Clark and Morag, I travelled with them for a few months."

Steel walked right within his personal space and stared at him with apparent interest and then looked back at Sapphire. "Is that how he got in?"

"It could be," she walked up to Clint and reached up a hand. He had a moment's premonition that she was about to place it above his heart. Her eyes were glowing a bright blue. He knocked the hand aside without hesitation and took a quick step backwards. 

Natasha raised her guns to cover Sapphire once more. "Step away," she said in her most deadly voice.

Sapphire stepped back, dropping her hand and her eyes went back to their normal colour. "I intend no harm."

"Don't touch him."

Sapphire and Steel exchanged a glance and then Sapphire retreated further, walking around to stand behind Steel, at his shoulder. 

Steel took the flyer from her. "What happened to them?" he asked, looking at Clint.

"He dropped her. The final trick in the act was a double somersault and they would do it without the safety net." Clint had been due to go on next. He had seen it all happen from where he was waiting in the wings, before the crowds swarmed in and blocked his view. He saw the way the somersault was off, not quite high enough, and the way her fingertips grazed Clark's before she fell into the space below.

Sapphire and Steel looked at each other again for a long moment and then both looked up to where the trapezes hung above them.

"Show us," Steel commanded.

"Why?" Clint asked though without any real expectation of a straight answer.

"The trapeze is what we call a trigger," said Sapphire. "It's a focal point for energy and something from outside time is using it to break through into your universe."

"How?" Natasha asked.

"We're not sure. It might help if your friend would let me examine him."

"No," Natasha said.

Sapphire leaned her head to once side as if conceding a point. "I would guess that this is an anniversary of the accident."

Clint tried to think. It had been around Christmas time. He recalled the decorations in the ticket office. It was around Christmas time now, but he had little idea of the exact date. "Could be," he said.

"I think that Morag is hoping for a second chance. She is hoping that this time someone will catch her," Sapphire said.

"And if they do?" Natasha asked.

"Then time breaks in," Steel said. 

"Who would catch her? You said the ring is sealed?"

Steel looked directly at Clint. "You knew them. You were allowed in. Could you catch her?"

Clint looked up at the swinging trapeze. "Probably. It wasn't such a difficult catch if the somersault went right."

"Why would Hawkeye even be up there?" Natasha asked.

As if in answer there was a sound of something clattering in the flyspace.

"Why were you here in the first place?" Steel countered. "How hard would it be to lure him up there?"

One of Natasha's eyebrows twitched. She was a consummate professional but Clint could tell he was in for some teasing once they got out of this because it would have been trivially easy to get him high up into the roof spaces.

Sapphire smiled, followed a few heartbeats later by Steel, as if they had deduced the answer.

Up above them someone called softly. It sounded like Clint's name.

"We can't get out of this time bubble, correct?" Natasha asked.

"No," Sapphire said. "We're all trapped here until this is resolved."

"And if I go up there and catch this... ghost or whatever then bad stuff will happen?" Clint said.

"Very bad stuff," said Steel.

"So how exactly do we resolve everything?" Natasha asked.

Sapphire and Steel exchanged another of their glances. Clint rather wished he and Natasha could have private conversations in a single look.

"He has to go up there and drop her," Steel said, pointing at Clint.

Clint looked up at the trapeze. "Climb up there and fail to catch a ghost, doesn't sound too hard."

Sapphire looked at Natasha. "I expect you will both need to be up there."

There was the barest heartbeat of a pause.

"Climb up there and fail to catch Black Widow?" Clint asked. "No deal."

"It's the only way," Steel said.

Clint crossed his arms over his chest. "Not happening."

"If we can't prevent time breaking in the results will be catastrophic," Sapphire said.

"Time isn't breaking in, not unless I go up there and catch someone," Clint said stubbornly.

"You don't understand, sooner or later time will force you to go up there. You have no choice," Steel said.

"I think you are the ones who don't understand. We have no reason to believe anything you say," Natasha replied.

"You've checked the time seal for yourself," Sapphire said.

"We know there is a strange effect at the edge of this circus ring. We have only your word on anything else."

"Trust needs to be earned," Clint said.

"This is pointless," Steel said, no longer even attempting to conceal his irritation and impatience.

"I have an idea," said Sapphire. "It should be possible to wind time back a few seconds after the catch fails but before Black Widow reaches the ground. That should be sufficient to prevent any harm befalling her."

"Wind time back?" Natasha asked.

"Perhaps you would permit me a small demonstration. "

* * *

Clint perched up on the trapeze. He'd been taught the basics of the art when he was in the circus. He hoped he remembered enough. Opposite him Natasha swung on the other trapeze. Her mouth was set in a thin angry line. They had spent an hour arguing with Sapphire and Steel and testing the edges of the time bubble. Both of them found Sapphire and Steel profoundly unsettling and deeply untrustworthy. Neither of them liked the fact that their only current option was to trust their promises.

Across the ring, standing on a catwalk, Sapphire stood gazing at Clint with her bluer than blue eyes shining brightly. Natasha swung her trapeze and her form blurred, for a moment her red hair darkened to Morag Gluckton's jet black. Clint rolled backwards so that he hung from the trapeze by his knees, keeping his swings in time with Natasha.

Natasha released her hold and started a somersault in mid air. As she turned she continued to blur, looking like Natasha one moment and Morag the other. The somersaults were right, she would be easy to catch. As she unfolded out of the somersault, Clint saw Natasha's face gazing anxiously at him across the empty space. He reached his arms out as if to catch her.

"Now, Sapphire!" Steel shouted.

A thudding sound was just audible and as Clint swung he caught a glimpse of Sapphire. Her arms were raised and her blonde hair was blowing in a non-existent gale.

His hands grazed against Natasha's. He looked her in the eye and then they both jerked their hands away. He missed the catch. The thudding sound was deafening and the world vanished for a moment in a blaze of blue. Then Clint was rolling back once more to hang by his knees from the trapeze. Natasha was opposite him just starting her swing. Sapphire was nowhere to be seen.

A gun shot rang out. Sound exploded on the comms, Coulson demanding, "Hawkeye, Black Widow, please respond!"

A second shot zipped past Clint's shoulder. He could see a shooter on the opposite catwalk holding a long rifle aimed at Natasha. More shots came up from below. There must be other enemies lurking in the ringside seats. Clint and Natasha were sitting ducks, suspended on the trapeze as they were, only the swinging movement had prevented them being hit so far and the gunmen would rapidly compensate. Clint grabbed his bow from his back and as the trapeze swing reached its apex he let loose an arrow, hitting the rifleman on the catwalk between the eyes. At the same moment Natasha let go of her trapeze and tucked into a somersault. Clint reached out his free hand and grabbed hold of her arm as she unfolded. Her hand slipped slightly in his, neither of them fully prepared for the lop-sided catch. He swung her back and let go, allowing her to land on the platform behind the trapeze. He righted himself. Natasha was already crouched on the platform shooting down into the ring below.

By the time Clint had turned and swung onto the platform himself there was no one left alive beyond the two of them.

"Report!" Coulson shouted.

"All sorted," Natasha said coolly. "It was a trap. Four shooters. Looks like one professional assassin and three back-up. We've taken them out."

"Someone was careless, four shooters against the two of you."

"Someone was careless," Natasha agreed.

They climbed down from the trapeze and left the ring in wary silence, watchful for more enemies. They paused briefly by a poster showing Anton and Gabriella on their trapeze with the headline `The World's Greatest Trapeze Act' emblazoned underneath. 

Clint sighed. "They were actually pretty lousy trapeze artists."

The corner of Natasha's mouth twitched and she tucked a hand into the crook of his arm. "They are also long gone."

"Yes," Clint agreed. 

He risked a look back into the ring. He thought he briefly saw a flash of blue and then it was gone.


End file.
